Changing Tracks – Communications Lead for national music services inclusion learning programme
“Anita is passionate about inclusion and takes a strategic approach to integrating development with comms. Her work on Changing Tracks website and social media has been very helpful in communicating our action-based research in a way that can be easily digested.” Michael Davidson, Head of Rock, Family and Community Music, Hertfordshire County Council; strategic lead, Changing Tracks inclusion programme.
When Anita completed her work for the Alliance for a Musically Inclusive England in April 2020 she was approached by Hertfordshire Music Service (HMS), one of the 13 partners, to ask if she could carry out similar work for them. HMS (a team within the Children’s Services Department of Hertfordshire County Council) runs the Changing Tracks musical inclusion programme with, for and by music services across England. The programme is funded by Youth Music. The team were keen to make better use of communications to share the learning from their programme with music services and leads of music education hubs, and raise their profile in the sector.
Initially, Anita was contracted to help the three strategic/programme leads (Michael Davidson, Head of Rock, Family & Community Music at HMS; Nick Denham, Head of Inclusion at HMS and Lyndall Rosewarne, freelance strategic lead for the programme) to devise a communications strategy.
Anita has since been working with the team – now including music leader Ije Amaechi, and project officer Rory Davidson – one day a week since November 2019 to support the delivery of the strategy and oversee a complete rebrand and the launch of a new website.
The work has covered working as part of the team to develop the strategy and plan for the programme, based on feedback and insights from the sector; and creating a range of multi-media learning content and resources, including films, infographics, thought-leader articles, and reports from working groups.
Results have included:
- Website – an estimated increase in web visitors from 1,000 to 4,000
- Twitter – a 37% increase in followers and 75% increase in engagement
- Enews – a 24% increase in subscribers; 10% increase in opens and 11% increase in click-throughs
A Google Data Studio dashboard is now providing an easy way for the team to monitor the impact of communications including conversion rates for goals (downloads, video plays, reading blogs to 75% depth, staying onsite for 15 minutes plus).
The work has helped to share the learning from the programme and help music service teams to embed equality, diversity and inclusion throughout their organisational culture, strategy and practices.